


A Broken Clock

by moistdrippings



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (duh), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, FBI Agent Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Job Swap, M/M, Psychiatrist Will Graham, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 19:24:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12688671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moistdrippings/pseuds/moistdrippings
Summary: After the Hobbs case, FBI Agent Hannibal Lecter sees Dr. Will Graham to be cleared for further duty.





	A Broken Clock

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for Kinktober 2017, for the "role reversal" prompt... though I doubt this is what they had in mind with that one. There's also not a LOT of porn in it — so little, in fact, that I only went with an E rating to be on the safe side. Sorry!
> 
> Feel free to point out any mistakes.

"Hannibal." Dr. Graham rapped once on his notepad, hard, and quite rudely, fixing a sharp look on Hannibal's face. He looked down momentarily, and then slipped off his glasses, meeting Hannibal's eyes for the first time since their session began. "I won't be rubber-stamping you. Jack entrusted me with your mind, and like it or not you'll have to pass my tests before you'll see field work again."

Hannibal folded his hands across his knee and let himself smile — just a little, but genuinely. Dr. Graham had been far more rude than he would normally tolerate, especially from a psychiatrist, but somehow it came off only as charming on him. Hannibal wasn't sure why. "I should hope so. Ms. Bloom wouldn't have recommended you if you weren't dedicated to ensuring my mental health."

"No, she wouldn't have," Dr. Graham agreed, looking at his notepad again. It was a repeated tic, obviously learned to avoid eye contact with his patients; Hannibal found it endlessly amusing that a man who found it so difficult to interact with others socially was so adept at psychoanalyzing them. "So why, then, are you trying so hard to lie to me?"

Hannibal put on a surprised face — a twitch of an eyebrow, a slight widening of the eyes, a little laxness of mouth. Well-practiced, and maybe a little real. Most people didn't see beneath his outermost layers. "I'm not lying to you, Dr. Graham. I promise."

"Omitting the relevant truth, then." With a huff, Dr. Graham stood, moving to his desk to drop the notepad on top of it. He pressed his fingers to it, making a show of looking at his desktop, but Hannibal could tell his eyes were unfocused, if only for a moment. More avoidance. "Let's start simple. Why did you insist that I be the one to clear you for further work?"

"I feel a bond with you."

"Because of Abigail Hobbs," Dr. Graham said.

Hannibal nodded. "Because of her, and her father."

"Because I killed him."

Hannibal said nothing, but enjoyed the memory in silence a moment: Dr. Graham had already interested him before he'd stolen away from the investigation to forewarn Garret Jacob Hobbs that they were onto him, but when he had found Hannibal in the Hobbs house, apparently disarmed and with a knife to his throat, Abigail bleeding on the floor beside him, he had leapt into action like no psychiatrist Hannibal had known before him, picking up Hannibal's gun and shooting Mr. Hobbs nearly a dozen times.

It had been exciting, and Hannibal could not let him disappear after.

In his office, with days between himself and the corpse, however, Dr. Graham had artfully dodged addressing his own role in Hobbs's death.

Dr. Graham still wouldn't look at him, his eyes far away. His mouth was a thin, stern line. "Should I be writing up a clarification for Jack?"

"Not at all. There's no reason for him to think I wasn't the one who shot him. If Abigail recovers — and it seems likely she will, thanks to you — I don't believe she'll be able to provide any evidence to the contrary either."

"Yes, I imagine it would be... _difficult_ to remember who shot who while you were bleeding out on your kitchen floor." Dr. Graham turned then, but stayed at his desk, bracing himself on it by his hip. "Why are you covering for me? You could be done with me and back in the field by now if they knew you didn't kill anyone."

Oh, if only they knew, Hannibal thought. "You live a modest life, for a psychiatrist. You're protective of your personal life and your practice. I see no reason to have that interrupted by an inquiry into your use of deadly force in an FBI investigation."

Dr. Graham wet his lips, and Hannibal fought to keep from following the motion too closely. "This is exactly what I mean. You may not be lying outright, but you're obfuscating the truth. Why do you _really_ want to cover for me?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Dr. Graham furrowed his brow, and with a burst of anxious motion he crossed back to the chair Hannibal sat in, standing over him like he could intimidate anyone. Hannibal should have been intimidated. Dr. Graham's scrutiny was the last thing he needed in his life, short of a trail of blood leading to his basement. He should have let Jack investigate him and written him off; better yet, he should have engineered the Hobbs situation more carefully, so that he might have been eliminated at the scene.

He should have been worried. Instead, he felt stimulated.

"If you have any interest in this working," Dr. Graham said, low and dangerous, "then don't lie to me."

Hannibal held his gaze a moment, and then looked down, pretending to be cowed. He let it linger a moment before looking up again, projecting sincerity fiercely. "I think you should continue to consult with the FBI."

Dr. Graham blinked twice, rapidly, confusion writ across his features. The angry line between his eyes bled away. "Excuse me?"

"You make a better partner for my work than any agent within the FBI ever has," Hannibal explained, keeping steady eye contact. Dr. Graham, who should have been unnerved, seemed to have no trouble holding his gaze. "We're remarkably compatible. I believe you could be directly beneficial in unravelling and even preventing more murders."

"Compatible?" Dr. Graham asked, his mouth shaping the word like it was foreign to him. He took a step back, sitting in his chair again slowly. "An FBI agent who nearly got himself killed and the psychiatrist that went overboard taking down a murder suspect? I don't know that 'compatible' is the word I'd use."

"Complementary, then," Hannibal said, immensely pleased with the lack of resistance. He had expected a fight the moment he had brought the idea up; in fact, he hadn't initially intended to mention it at all just yet.

Dr. Graham huffed a laugh. "Complementary. 'Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean.' That's what you're looking for?"

Hannibal felt an inexplicable stirring of something in his belly at the childlike reference, but he ignored it, leaving it for later examination. Truthfully, he said, "Yes. Your insight would be invaluable to me, Dr. Graham."

Dr. Graham stared at him a moment, and then leaned back, sighing softly. "If you wanted to avoid an upheaval in my life, dragging me into the minds of serial killers isn't exactly the way to do it."

"We'd only go as far as you're comfortable," Hannibal said. He leaned a little forward, conspiratorially. "We could get Jack's approval, and perhaps I could even be cleared to share evidence with you directly. You'd have a whole new perspective on the human mind."

Dr. Graham shared a wry grin. "I'm not sure that's a perspective I need."

It wasn't a no. Hannibal's lip twitched, against his will. "We could discuss it over dinner."

* * *

It had been a shock, watching Dr. Graham — Will, as Hannibal kept thinking of him — put his hands into a living body in the back of an ambulance. Intellectually Hannibal had known he was a skilled surgeon, but it was one thing for Hannibal to use his eye as a former forensic scientist to assess Will's medical knowledge while they looked over crime scene photographs together, and entirely another to see him step smoothly into the role in a high-stress situation like he had left the emergency room only hours and not years before.

It was as enrapturing as when he had carefully moved Hannibal's hands from Abigail Hobbs's throat, covering Hannibal's fingers with his own, and yet somehow more. Different. He was _radiant_.

Hannibal had been impressed with others before: people he'd worked with; people he'd slept with; people he'd killed. It all felt short of Dr. Will Graham.

And then, in a moment Hannibal had been completely unprepared for, he had walked into Will's office to the body of Tobias Budge. Hours later, with agents swarming around the scene and Will sat somberly at his desk, the thrill of it still hadn't abated.

"I had thought you were dead," he had admitted, quietly, when he had first seen Hannibal again. He had winced through attentions to the wound in his thigh, but he had remained close to Hannibal at all times, his eyes tracking back to him again and again.

Hannibal took him home.

"You couldn't even shoot Garret Jacob Hobbs," Will murmured, dressed down and in his own kitchen while Hannibal brewed them both coffee. "When I realized he was Franklyn's friend, I had thought for sure..."

He trailed off, but Hannibal didn't prompt more from him. It wasn't his place; he was the patient, the FBI agent who supposedly couldn't stomach killing. He handed Will a hot mug and sat across the table from him.

"It felt good," Will admitted, "to hit him with that statue, knowing — thinking — that he had killed you."

"You didn't mean to kill him," Hannibal said, covering Will's hand with his own. Will looked at their hands and not into his eyes; they both knew that was a lie.

"It's not right," Will said, his fingers twitching under Hannibal's, "to be this attached to my patient."

"I'd like to think we're friends."

Will nodded tightly. "We are. I haven't really thought of you as a patient since before I shot Hobbs."

Something in Hannibal's animal hindbrain cried victory.

Will looked up into his eyes then, slow and fidgety, but sure once he found his destination. "I've killed two people for you."

"Maybe some day I'll have the chance to return the favor," Hannibal said, and he almost expected Will to take it as a joke. He didn't.

Hannibal had imagined a number of scenarios wherein he had seduced Will — to better blind him to the truth of who Hannibal was, or to maneuver him into a better position to look like he was responsible for the copycat murders. He had dismissed it as fantasy every time. He had not, in all his imaginings, pictured Will as the one to stand up and come over to kiss him first.

Will was an especially adept kisser. He took control quickly with a wide mouth and agile tongue, yet with almost no direct force. His methods did not require reciprocation for pleasure, but allowed it easily, letting Hannibal feel out the line of his teeth and taste his lips before skillfully guiding his tongue back into his own mouth. Heat swept through Hannibal, and he fought the urge to surge up and take Will by the shoulders, to throw him onto his own bed, awkwardly located just within his living room. He redirected his energy instead, putting his hands at Will's waist and then trailing one down to the front of his pants.

"God," Will said, separating their mouths and resting his forehead against Hannibal's. "You were my _patient_."

"I'm not your patient now," Hannibal said, working open Will's belt. "If anyone's taking advantage right now, it would be me. You're emotionally compromised."

"No, no." Will shook his head, but pushed at his pants, letting them fall down his hips as he worked at opening Hannibal's shirt. "It's just how I am with you. You make me feel so... unbalanced."

Will clutched at his shoulders as Hannibal swallowed him down, loosing a thready moan into the air above them. Hannibal, almost unsettled by his own eagerness, sucked at him hard and took him down his throat, worshipping his cock with his saliva and tastebuds and the faintest edge of teeth. Will thrust helplessly into his mouth, his hips stuttering as he tried and failed to hold himself back. He came with a wordless grunt, one hand tangled in the hair at Hannibal's crown.

After, crowded up naked behind Will in his bed, Hannibal inhaled deep the scent of fever behind Will's ear. Its sweetness complimented the tangy, bitter smell of sex, and he wondered if Will was normally capable of two successive orgasms so fast — he had taken almost no time at all, for a man his age, to rise again and press his fat, eager cock into Hannibal's poorly-stretched hole — or if the sickness in him had conjured that aspect just for Hannibal's benefit.

Hannibal found himself playing with a curl of dark hair between his forefinger and thumb, and he hoped, against all his own needs, that it was the former.


End file.
